


the stars began to burn

by Vorpal_Sword



Series: the soft animal of your body [5]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Daemons, Episode: s01e13 The Second David Job, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Past Character Death, Season Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:29:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21672238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vorpal_Sword/pseuds/Vorpal_Sword
Summary: After her ex-husband has achieved his revenge, after Blackpoole loses everything he cared about, after she's overseen the return of $150 million of artwork, Maggie and her daemon go home.Sterling is waiting for them on the porch.
Series: the soft animal of your body [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1483046
Comments: 26
Kudos: 140





	the stars began to burn

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals, in part, with Maggie's grief over the death of her son. 
> 
> Title from The Journey, by Mary Oliver:
> 
> _One day you finally knew  
>  what you had to do, and began,  
> though the voices around you  
> kept shouting  
> their bad advice—  
> though the whole house  
> began to tremble  
> and you felt the old tug  
> at your ankles.  
> "Mend my life!"  
> each voice cried.  
> But you didn't stop.  
> You knew what you had to do,  
> though the wind pried  
> with its stiff fingers  
> at the very foundations,  
> though their melancholy  
> was terrible.  
> It was already late  
> enough, and a wild night,  
> and the road full of fallen  
> branches and stones.  
> But little by little,  
> as you left their voice behind,  
> the stars began to burn  
> through the sheets of clouds,  
> and there was a new voice  
> which you slowly  
> recognized as your own,  
> that kept you company  
> as you strode deeper and deeper  
> into the world,  
> determined to do  
> the only thing you could do —  
> determined to save  
> the only life that you could save._

When Maggie gets home that night, she’s thinking vaguely about what takeout she should order and reviewing the remembered contents of her wine rack. She figures she deserves it, after the week she’s had. She rubs her knuckles, still sore from the punch she’d given Ian Blackpoole, and smirks to herself. 

It’s a small house, she knows, but it’s all hers. Maggie hadn’t been able to stay in the house they’d mortgaged to pay for Sam’s treatment, full of empty rooms haunted by the memories of her son and ex-husband. It’s solely her taste decorating this house, warm yellows and oranges where Nate always preferred greys and blacks, her favorite art on the walls, her flowers in the windowsills and on the porch.

Claude hums in her ear. It takes Maggie a moment to realize what her daemon clearly already has. There’s someone sitting on one of her porch chairs, and even before getting close enough to see in the dim light, she’s sure she knows who it is. It’s the glow of his daemon’s eyes that tips her off— there’s only one man with a cat daemon who would be on her porch tonight.

“Are you here to get me arrested?” she asks. 

He stands. “Dr. Collins. Claudius. Please forgive my intrusion.” His polite greeting gives her a momentary twinge of guilt at her own lack of manners, but this man had spent the better part of the day trying to thwart her plans. (Seriously, what even is her life, that being _thwarted_ is a thing that can happen to her, like she’s in a grand adventure novel of some kind.) And she can’t help but notice that he didn’t exactly answer her question. 

“That didn’t answer my question,” she points out.

He visibly restrains himself from making a smarmy retort. Instead, he says formally, “I have no intention of assisting in your arrest so long as you don’t make art theft a part of your routine.” He pauses and his daemon’s striped tail twitches. “Not, of course, that I have any knowledge of any crimes with which you may or may not have been involved _out_ of your normal routine.”

“Naturally not,” Maggie says. Claude flutters briefly on her shoulder, letting her know that, despite everything, her daemon believes James Sterling is telling the truth, at least for the moment. Does he think she will let something slip about Nate’s plan, something to get the crew in trouble? Perhaps he just wants information so he can plug the holes in his security system. That’s what she’d be doing here, if she were in his shoes. If she were Nate, she’d hint around the issue, trying to narrow down a picture of Sterling's goals like a sculptor chipping away at a chunk of marble, but she’s Maggie, so she says, “Why are you here? Planning to pump me for information I may or may not have?”

“Actually, I came to apologize.” That had not been on her list of possible reasons for his presence here. She controls her shock as he lifts the bag next to him and adds, “I brought drinks. And ice. I had a bit of a hunch that your hand might need icing tonight.” 

Maggie unlocks the front door, drops her bag inside, and turns the porch light on. She turns back to Sterling, who is standing in the same position with the bag still held out to her. His daemon, however, has leaped onto the chair beside him, where she watches Maggie with blue-grey eyes. 

It’s a pleasant night. There's a light breeze, and somewhere cicadas are singing. She sits on the chair across from the cat and says, “Well?”

“Give her the ice,” the cat says. She’s got a queen’s name, Maggie thinks, but not Elizabeth. Victoria, that’s it. 

Obediently, James hands Maggie the bag of ice and a dishtowel to go with it. Victoria leaps to perch precariously on the arm of the chair while her human sits down, then settles into his lap.

Maggie has to admit that the ice soothes her sore hand. She surveys the insurance man silently. Claude flutters to rest on her wrist, his orange and black wings shimmering in the soft light of the porch. 

“You came to apologize,” she prompts. 

Sterling takes a deep breath. “I came to apologize,” he repeats. It is clear these are not words he says particularly often, except perhaps as false humility to sooth his corporate overlords. His discomfort with sincerity is palpable as he continues.

“Maggie, I didn’t know that you didn’t know about Blackpoole denying the insurance claim. I may be a self-serving utter bastard—” his daemon flicks her ears sharply—“but I should have said something. I didn’t bring it up because I thought you knew and that you were trying to move past it professionally, and I didn’t want to say anything that might make you uncomfortable. If I had really stopped to consider, I would have realized that your behavior only made sense if you didn’t know, but I didn’t want to think about it. You deserved to know, and I am sorry for my part in keeping that from you.”

Claude trembles on Maggie’s wrist. She thinks of the betrayal she felt when Nate finally told her—not just the betrayal that Nate hadn’t shared the truth with her, but that everyone around her knew and had known for years, had thought she would be okay working for a man who had deliberately let her son die, and had not said a word. She thinks of Nate, crying on her shoulder, of the way Brigid’s eyes tracked Claude while the rest of her drooped. It's hard to fathom that it has been less than a week since Nathan Ford upended her world yet again.

“Nate was trying to protect me. He didn’t want to give me false hope before, and, after, well.” She shrugs. She’s not sure why she’s making excuses for Nate. Her therapist would disapprove. Claude certainly does. He flicks his antennae. Sterling glances at the butterfly, and she knows that he caught the movement and the disagreement it implies. 

“Be that as it may,” Sterling says, “I am sorry.” 

Maggie’s therapist also says not to accept apologies unless she means it and definitely not to dismiss apologies with a _it’s alright_ when it very definitely is not. Instead, Maggie says, “Thank you.”

“You know, for a _very_ smart man who had me dancing like a puppet on his strings today, your ex-husband is a goddamn idiot,” Sterling remarks, and Maggie gives a startled laugh. “Tell me, do you think he’ll finally stop underestimating you now?”

She goes still. On her arm, Claude folds his wings up so he resembles a moth more than a butterfly except for that one splotch of orange left. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” she says. 

Victoria laughs. “Of course you do,” she purrs. Maggie has known James and Victoria for years, and she’s heard Victoria and Claude talk a time or two, but this is the first time she can remember Victoria talking directly to her. Aside from Brigid and Parker's dragonfly in the last couple of days, she can't remember the last time another person's daemon spoke directly to her. 

“Okay, I do,” Maggie admits, touching Claude’s folded wings with one very careful finger. After the first few times they worked together, Nate had stopped doubting her professional expertise, but even after ten years of marriage, he tended to treat her like she was fragile, as though he had to shield her from the world. He hadn’t even told her there was a possibility of saving their son because he thought having that hope torn away would destroy her. She might be bitterly amused that it had ended up destroying him instead if it had not already broken her heart. 

"We are a butterfly, after all," Claude says, and it is only because he is her own soul that Maggie hears the sarcasm in his tone.

Sterling hisses like a wet cat while his daemon bares her teeth. When she gives them a confused look, Victoria says, "We fired a man for saying that this morning."

Maggie blinks at her. "Excuse me?" she says.

The insurance investigator puts on an incongruous American accent. "C'mon, Mr. Sterling, Dr. Collins isn't a threat, she's just got a butterfly." He looks at Claudius and returns to his normal voice. "He was escorted out by security within the hour, though of course I had _other concerns_ to attend to and could not give him the full dressing down he so richly deserved." 

Victoria chuckles. Maggie stifles a smile. "It's a common enough stereotype, Mr. Sterling, you'll run out of staff pretty fast if you fire everyone who thinks butterflies are weak."

James snorts. " _Weak,"_ he says in tones of exaggerated incredulity and adds, _"_ _Vanessa cardui_ ,” like that's enough of an explanation. 

“Yes,” she confirms cautiously. It’s the Latin name of Claudius’s species.

“People assume that being a butterfly means you’re delicate and gentle, but people are _idiots.”_ The venom in his tone is surprising. “Painted lady butterflies migrate across the Mediterranean Sea _and_ the Sahara desert, surviving extreme conditions to reach their destination. They have incredible endurance.”

Maggie knows this, too, but she hasn’t heard anyone say it out loud quite like that. She says nothing. She can feel Claude trembling against her skin. 

“It’s a different kind of strength,” Victoria says, grooming her fur. She's deliberately not looking at them when she finishes, “Sometimes it takes more strength to keep getting out of bed every morning than it does to move a mountain.”

Claude flaps sharply off Maggie's wrist with the speed and grace a regular butterfly might have when a predator’s shadow falls across it. He hovers by her head. She feels and shares his astonishment at being _seen_ so thoroughly after an adulthood of being casually dismissed. It’s rather unnerving. She believes Sterling’s apology is sincere, but she hasn’t forgotten the animosity Nate’s crew bears this man, how he weaponized that insight to nearly catch them. Maggie has spent her entire adult life dedicated to preserving and protecting art. She has always hated art thieves on principle, but after the week she’s spent with Parker, something in her recoils at the thought of the thief behind bars. 

Claude says, “You know something about being underestimated, I think.” 

Sterling shrugs, falsely modest. “Oh, well, you know.” He drops the act. “Less so, these days, now that we’ve built a certain... reputation.” 

His daemon laughs. “There are still people who think I’m a _housecat_ , though,” she adds, contempt clear in her voice, though Maggie isn’t sure if the contempt is for domestic cats or for the fools who misread her. 

Claude laughs too. “Yes, well, people are idiots,” he says, and Maggie finishes, “ _We_ never thought that.”

“No?” James asks.

“Nah. European wildcat, right?” She thinks of Eliot and adds, “It’s a very distinctive pattern of stripes.” 

His eyes flicker and she wonders if he recognizes that _very distinctive_ turn of phrase or if she’s managed to impress him. 

“Right,” he says. Claude settles onto Maggie’s hair like an over-sized barrette. Victoria watches him with glowing eyes.

“Sometimes,” Maggie says, her own eyes on Victoria and her thoughts miles away, “I think Tabitha would have settled as a cat of some kind.”

James runs a hand down his daemon’s back, lingering against her soft fur. He says nothing. What could anyone possibly say to that?

Maggie thinks again of the tiny tabby cat form her son’s daemon had favored. Tabby had always been overly amused by puns. “Probably would have driven Brigid crazy as a teenager,” she adds, and both James and Victoria snort a laugh before stopping abruptly with identical guilty looks. These two know a little something about tension between cat and dog daemons, especially when it comes to Nate's large bloodhound. 

She waves off their apologies before they can start. “It would have been hilarious,” she says, and wipes at her eyes with an angry palm. Her fingertips are ice-cold against her closed eyes. She tries to focus on that cool sensation, and the reassuring tickle of Claude in her hair, and the cicada’s song—anything other than the devastating fact that she will never know the true form of her son’s soul. 

“You mentioned drinks?” Claude asks, startling his human. Claudius usually disapproves when she drinks— he hates how it messes with his coordination and ability to fly, and both of them are wary of following Nate and Brigid’s example when it comes to alcohol. But then, it really has been a hell of a day. 

Sterling reaches obligingly for the bag by his foot.

“Not Scotch, I hope?” Maggie says, and everyone considerately ignores how rough her voice sounds.

“Please, Dr. Collins, give me some credit,” Sterling says, pulling out a bottle of wine. “It’s a pinot grigio, of course.” He stands to hold the bottle out to her. She takes it. It’s still chilled from the pack of ice that’s now melting on her lap. 

“I should head out,” he says, though Victoria has made no move to leave her perch on the porch chair. “It’s been a long day.” 

“Or you could come in,” she says, also standing. “How do you feel about Thai food? I was planning to order takeout.” 

“That would be lovely,” he replies, looking as astonished as she had felt when he'd said he was here to apologize.

She moves to open the door. “No questions about Nate or his people or I’m kicking you out,” she warns. 

He holds up his hands in surrender. “I can think of far more interesting topics than your ex-husband and his dubious associates,” he claims. Victoria’s ears flick back and Maggie makes a mental note to be cautious. 

“Like, for instance, your recovery of that Monet in Australia last month?” she suggests, ushering him inside. The wildcat pads along beside him. 

James grins. “It is quite a dashing story,” he says with no trace of humility. 

“I've been dying to hear the details,” Maggie admits. “I’ve always been partial to Monet.” She goes to the kitchen to grab a couple of wine glasses and the corkscrew. 

She pauses by the window. There’s a picture there, tilted so she can see it when she wants but where it won’t startle her when she’s unprepared. It’s Sam, after a baseball game, Tabby on his shoulder as a robin. 

She rubs again at her knuckles. 

“He would have thought it was the coolest thing in the world, you punching Blackpoole,” Claude says, flying onto her hand.

She snorts. “Yeah, and we would’ve had a hell of a time convincing him that _he_ wasn’t allowed to punch anyone.” 

“We won’t make a habit of it,” Claude agrees. He laughs. “The look on the bastard’s face, though!”

Maggie grins, remembering the shock that had flashed over Blackpoole’s face just before she punched him, how the striped salamander who had never once acknowledged Claude blinked up at them from the floor in utter confusion. “Shows him to make assumptions about butterflies.” She lifts him to her face and they nuzzle noses. “You know I’ve never regretted how you settled, right?” she says. They’ve discussed this before, but their therapist says reassurance is helpful. “Sometimes I regret the expectations it gives other people or the stereotypes they have, but that’s a problem with the culture, not with us.” 

Claudius brushes her cheek with a wing. “I know,” he says. He flutters to sit in the windowsill by the picture. “There’s no real guarantee that the treatment definitely would have saved him, you know. Nothing’s certain.”

“I know,” she says. “Nothing’s ever certain.”

Maggie and her daemon look for another moment at the picture of their son in his Little League uniform, at the gap in his smile where he’d just lost a tooth, at the round red belly of his daemon. Living without Sam never gets easier, but they have gotten stronger. It’s a desert crossing without water, an ocean crossing with nowhere to rest, but Maggie and her daemon will keep moving. 

Maggie presses a kiss to her fingertips and taps it gently against the glass frame. Claude silently glides to her shoulder. She picks up the wine glasses and snags a menu from the drawer. They return to the living room to talk about curries and waterlilies. They do not let slip any information about Nate or his team. 

Eventually, James will go home to an empty house. Maggie will stretch out across her bed, enjoying the satin sheets Nate hated, while Claude spreads his wings to settle on his plant on the bedside table. In the morning, Maggie will go to work. They’ve got a Dutch Masters exhibit arriving on loan from Boston this week, and Maggie is looking forward to spending some time with the Rembrandts. On Wednesday, she’ll go to therapy. 

For now, they talk, and they listen, and they laugh. Outside, the stars begin to burn. Time keeps moving, and they move with it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Daemons in this chapter:
> 
> Maggie Collins- Claudius, a Painted Lady Butterfly. As Sterling notes, painted lady butterflies are known for their long migrations and endurance. The top side of their wings resembles the orange and black pattern of the more well-known Monarch butterfly, while the underside has a brown and white pattern more reminiscent of moths. Butterflies also symbolize rebirth and transformation. People with butterfly daemons are often seen as frivolous and may struggle to be taken seriously. Daemons in Maggie's family are frequently given Latin names, but Maggie and Claude generally use the nickname in honor of their favorite artist, Claude Monet.
> 
> James Sterling- Victoria, a European Wildcat. Unsurprisingly, the European wildcat is a species of wildcat native to Europe. They have a distinctive pattern of stripes, with five stripes across their foreheads, long stripes going the other direction across their backs, and striped rings around their tails. Although they are frequently mistaken for feral domestic cats in the wild, they are notoriously impossible to tame. They are excellent trackers and hunters. Victoria is named both for the English Queen and for victory, because Sterling never loses. 
> 
> Ian Blackpoole- Unnamed, Barred Tiger Salamander. Tiger salamanders are large striped amphibians who live in forests and streams. They are opportunistic feeders with poisonous tails. While the adults are largely laid back, cannibalistic behavior has been observed among the larvae of the species. 
> 
> Other notes:  
> Sam's daemon, Tabitha, was named by Nate for a woman in the Christian Bible restored to life by the apostle Peter.


End file.
